Of “late years” there has been, Hume wrote in his Treatise of Human Nature, a controversy that has “so much excited the curiosity of the publick, whether these moral distinctions be founded on natural and original principles, or arise from interest and education” Those who adopted the second of these views-those who traced the alleged distinction between virtue and vice to self-interest and education - had claimed, as Hume puts it, that morality itself has "no foundation in nature" but is, rather, founded merely on the pain or pleasure that arises from considerations of self-interest. In contrast, those who ranged themselves on the other side of this issue - those who said that moral distinctions are founded on natural and original principles - claimed that "morality is something real, essential, and founded on nature" (T 2.1.7, 295-6).